Why You'll Want to Break EEW's Rules
And how not to...
Remember Everything Every Week’s Rules #1 - 4:
Pay These Only 1 Time Per Week: yourself, your bills, and your taxes
Open Two Accounts: one for Income, one for Expenses
Three People You Never Lie To: the IRS, your Bookkeeper, and Yourself
Forward Your Receipts to Yourself:
Digital Receipts —> Forward to yourself via email
Paper Receipts —> Snap a photo and send to your email
Holding to these simple rules will change your Sole Proprietorship.
Once you adopt them, however, you’ll notice the impulse to break them… usually out of convenience.
By rejecting the impulse to break EEW Rules #1 - 4, you will improve where you are weakest in your financial operations.
Let’s get more concrete…
Impulse to break EEW Rule #1:
You’ve already paid yourself this week, and spent your OPEX account down to near zero on paying planned business expenses.
You open an email from an important vendor… they are asking if you can pay their small invoice, because it was due ten days ago.
Feeling silly, you decide to transfer a tiny bit from your Income Account (which is full of new money your business earned over the past few days) over to your OPEX account, so you can pay the invoice.
😱😱😱😱😱!!
RULE #1 BROKEN
Remember: You’ve committed to pay your Expenses once per week.
Same scenario, but following Rule #1:
You email the vendor and apologize for your oversight of their invoice and explain that you will pay the invoice next week.
And that’s it!
So what exactly does Rule #1 do for you, the Sole Prop, in this scenario?
A) It ties the consequences (in this case, embarrassment) more directly to your actions (poor expense planning)… thus increasing the likelihood that you’ll improve that action next time around (better planning!).
B) It causes you to pay bills on time, and look forward to doing it… because you will notice how much better that feels than sending your vendor an “I can’t pay you” email.
and lastly…
C) It gives you a clear opportunity to evaluate the true cost of the vendor’s services… and increases the ease with which you will adopt frugality in future vendor purchases.
If you think you can succeed long-term as a Sole Proprietorship while breaking EEW Rules #1 - 4, you’re wrong.
But you can learn to resist the urge.
I’m reminded of a friend who was a professional Blackjack player. He counts cards — which gives him a very small statistical edge over the casino.
One tiny mistake means he loses that edge.
I asked him about tipping the dealer (it’s 100% customary to tip dealers when you win hands in Blackjack). It seemed to me that doing so would hamper the statistical edge.
“Yes,” he said, “When you’re a professional Blackjack player, you constantly feel the urge very strongly to tip the dealer… The solution to that problem is: resist the urge.”
That’s how you follow Rule #1.
